There are many reasons why you may be unhappy at this part of your life. A relationship alludes you or ends, the clock is ticking if you are a woman who wants to have children, you are bored with your job or it seems to be going nowhere, you have a dream, but cannot make it happen. Something is in the way, not right.

For some individuals, we know that something is very wrong – and we are depressed or unhappy. There can be conflict or even violence in relationships. Certain people or events at work really get to us – but it isn’t clear how to deal with it.

Individual therapy is the most direct, the exploration is of your feelings and life experiences in the safe environment with me. We are in charge of our feelings and the decisions we make in the process of creating our lives. The process of exploration is therefor one of discovery and clarity.

Connecting with your feelings takes you to what is happening now. But often you have felt this way before – earlier in your life. Or you know you have residual pain and anger from childhood trauma or abandonment. Reconnecting with these feelings is a way to get your thoughts and feelings to align, become congruent.

Authenticity

We are our most authentic self when our thoughts and feelings are aligned, centered in ourselves, grounded. Others call it, feeling comfortable in our own skin.

When we also have language to express ourselves from that centered space, we have our voice and can act. We are empowered from that place.

It is not easy to be in our authentic space in a noisy world, crowded with action, moving at a fast space.

Authenticity requires awareness and reflection – what am I feeling, what does it mean in my life, what is my purpose, the meaning of my life.

Young children sometimes say very authentic, insightful things – but they do not yet have the cognitive ability and language to make things happen from that space. But their experiences and feelings are valid and authentic.

A part of ourselves is often trapped in those feelings experienced in childhood. Sometimes we are able to connect with them through reflection – but most powerful is having someone to listen – to accept, respect, value and not to judge, question or criticize.

Telling Our Story

The way we connect with another or others is by telling our story – both the facts and our feelings about how we have experienced our lives. If there have been painful or confusing things about our lives, we sometimes don’t really know either the facts – or the feelings.

When children experience very traumatic events in their families, the feelings are often buried, no longer available to them. Yet they come out under conditions that create problems for oneself, at school or the work environment, in relationships.

When parents fight, children know something is wrong and are frightened. But if parents tell their children they are divorcing – without anything being obviously wrong – it is very confusing for children, a loss of trust in their own ability to know when something is wrong. In families with conflict, children, or some children in the family, become the object of parents’ anger and that child is abused, physically and emotionally. It becomes very hard for the other children. If they love that brother or sister, they are very upset when that child is targeted. But they are also grateful it is not happening to them – and pull away.

All of these experiences affect that person as an adult, carried over into dysfunctional relationships as well.

As we share our story and hear the story of another, we to begin to “know” each other. Trusting to share and receiving sharing create intimacy – the things we don’t share in ordinary life begin to weave a fabric of connection between us that takes us beyond the chemistry of attraction into a relationship.

When you come for therapy, you come because something is not working in your life the way you want it to. As you share your story with me, exploring together, you will discover new things about yourself. You are also laying a foundation for a relationship with others in your life outside of and beyond therapy.

The Night Blooming Cerius is a flower that blooms for only one night but also gives a wonderful fragrance. The flower is a symbol that life is fleeting, moment to moment never to return except in our memories, a reminder to make the most of each day.

A Year by the Sea

When her children are grown and have left home, Joan Anderson decided spontaneously not to go with him when her husband got a new job distant from where they had lived, raising their family. He was not happy with her decision. She felt “desperate” at the moment of separation, but also that her mothering wife role of the 90’s was now stale and outgrown. Instead she went alone to their Cape Cod cottage.

There she began to discover who she was at midlife. Responsible for supporting herself, she began to do new things beyond her writing.

“I’m tired of swimming upstream, against the current, only to arrive at unnatural destinations with little sense of where to yield, when to sow, what to ask for, how to find,” she wrote. She had lost the connections with herself.

Through this year of self-discovery, she met Joan Erickson, wife of the late Eric Erickson – noted psychoanalyst of the “Stages of Development.” She became Joan’s mentor and friend, sharing wisdom about the meaning of identity and life’s stages.

If you have lost that connection with yourself, I can help you rediscover yourself at any stage of your life.